“And it’s your house, so you win.”
“Not everything is a war, Rickie.”
“Now she tells me.” I got up and left the kitchen and went upstairs and checked on Noah, who wasn’t doing his homework, although to be fair it wasn’t like he was doing anything else. He was just sitting on the edge of my bed, fingering a tiny hole in his pant leg, gazing down at it with eyes that had gone dreamy and unfocused.
He didn’t even notice when I came in. I said sharply, “Noah? What are you doing?” and he started nervously and looked up at me.
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
I believed him.
When Mom called us down to dinner half an hour later, the table was set and Melanie was putting down a vase filled with freshly cut roses. “Aren’t they pretty?” she said with a satisfied sigh. “They’re just starting to bloom again.”
“They’re beautiful,” said Dad, who had just come into the kitchen. He made a slight noise as he sat down. He seemed to be doing that more and more: grunting every time he sat down or stood up. He had gained a lot of weight over the last ten years, and I suspected it put a strain on his back, but he wasn’t the type to complain. Or to go on a diet.
“There’s a bug in there,” Noah said, pointing to the center of one of the flowers.
“Oh, sorry.” Melanie grabbed a tissue from the box on the counter and brought it down toward the bug.
“Leave it alone!” Noah said, grabbing her arm. “It’s just a beetle. It won’t hurt us or anything. Leave it alone.”
“On the dinner table?” said my mother as she put down a dish of polenta.
“Why not?” my father said, winking at Noah. “Bugs gotta eat too.”
“Exactly,” said Noah with a serious nod.
Dad and Noah understood each other. They both looked at the world from some kind of sideways angle that no one else could get to. Especially not me.
I loved my dad, but he could drive me crazy.
When I was in seventh grade, I came home devastated one day because some of the girls had made fun of the brand-new sweater I was wearing, telling me the black and white stripes made me look like a fat skunk. My mother wasn’t home, so I vented to Dad. He listened, patted me on the shoulder, and said calmly, “The skunk is an unfairly maligned animal.”
I stared at him for a moment and then gave up and trudged off to my room to wait for my mother’s return. He just didn’t get me. And vice versa.
Fortunately, he had made his career in academia, where his single-minded devotion to his studies and social awkwardness were both considered pretty normal, and he became a full professor at an unusually young age. He had been teaching biology at UCLA since before I was born.
Sometimes when I looked at my father, his eyes would be vague and distant and his train of thought indecipherable. At those times, he reminded me so much of Noah. And I loved him the way I loved Noah: with frustration, loyalty, impatience, and the realization that the two most important males in my life would always be a complete mystery to me.
Melanie got a call from one of her kids just as dinner was ending and left the room to talk. Dad disappeared into his office and Noah went upstairs, but not before he’d informed me that he couldn’t do his homework without my help so I had to come up too.
“I need to talk to Grandma,” I said. “Get started without me and if you get stuck, I’ll help.”
“I already know I won’t be able to do it without you,” he said. “Can I just play on the computer until you come up?”
I was too tired to argue and just waved my hand in a gesture that was more surrender than actual assent. He ran off.
“What do you want to talk to me about?” Mom asked, stacking some plates and moving toward the kitchen.
I grabbed a bowl and followed her. “I’m mad at Dr. Wilson,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
I put the bowl down on the kitchen counter and told her about the PE class, throwing in the story about Caleb and the brownie for good measure. “I think Noah’s being targeted for some real teasing and bullying and no one will do anything about it. Dr. Wilson just says vague, unhelpful things like how he’ll ‘look into it.’ ”
Mom scraped some scraps of salad off a plate into the sink. “He doesn’t like to commit to anything concrete with parents. Used to drive me crazy when I was in there with a complaint.”
“You used to go in there to complain?” That surprised me. She was so madly in love with Fenwick as a school that I couldn’t imagine her ever complaining about anything there.
“Of course I did. Every parent does at some point.”
“Why? What happened to me?”
She reached for another plate. “Oh, who knows? I was a typical first-time mother, always worrying that something would go terribly wrong if you weren’t treated like glass.”
“And yet look how well I turned out,” I said with heavy sarcasm.
“You haven’t ‘turned out’ yet. You’re still a kid.”
“I’m not. I live at home like one, but I’m not one.” There was a pause. She stacked up the plates in the sink. Her bobbed, dyed-blond hair was a little rumpled in the back. “Maybe you could talk to him about the Noah stuff,” I said, leaning back against the counter, trying to make it sound like the idea had just occurred to me, like it was just a passing thought.
She looked over her shoulder at me. “To who? I mean whom. Louis Wilson?”
“I want to make sure he doesn’t blow it off.”
She shook her head. “I trust Louis to handle these things appropriately.”
“I think he’s more likely to if you get involved.”
“Rickie,” she said, and I could tell from her tone that I was about to be disapproved of. “I can’t play that role. You know that. Being the president of the board of trustees means I have to be more careful than other parents—grandparents in this case—not to throw my weight around. It’s inappropriate.”
“Don’t you even care about Noah?”
She raised her chin. “Do you really have to ask me that?”
“Yeah, maybe I do.”
“I think I’ve proven my devotion on a daily basis.”
“Most grandmothers would care that kids were torturing their grandchild and would want to do something about it.”
“Don’t draw one of your lines in the sand,” she said. “Don’t tell me that if I do this I’m a good grandmother and if I don’t, I’m a bad one. You’ve done that to me enough as a mother—I can’t take another twenty years of being tried and found guilty on a daily basis.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“It’s what you do, period.” She bent down and opened the dishwasher door with a loud creak. “I’m sorry that those boys were mean to Noah. You should call their mothers and let them know what their boys did and suggest they have a long talk with them about their behavior.” She tilted her head at me. “That’s how adults deal with these things, Rickie.”
“Thanks.” I headed toward the door. “Thanks for all the support, Mom. I’m so glad that you’re willing to help out when we need you.”
“That sarcasm would be much more effective if you weren’t living under my roof and off of my money.”
I whipped around. “You begged me to live here. You said it was the best thing for both of us. You said Noah and I should live here and you’d pay for him to go to Fenwick and it would be best for everyone. You said you wanted him—wanted us. And now you’re throwing it in my face like I’m some kind of parasite?”
“I’m not throwing it in your face.” She slammed a dish into the dishwasher rack. “Why does everything turn into a fight with you, Rickie? I do want you here. I think I’ve made that clear. I’m saying that the very fact I want you here should mean something to you. You have no right to tell me I don’t care about Noah. It’s mean and it’s not true.”
“I wasn’t the one picking a fight. You started it. You said you wouldn’t help and then accused m
e of being ungrateful.”
She stood up straight, closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. “I’m tired,” she said in a quieter voice. “And you’ve had a tough day. So let’s take a break. Think about this conversation, Rickie. Think about whether you’re being fair to me or not. And once you’ve thought about it long enough, come back and talk to me again.”
“Whatever,” I said, and, on that brilliant conclusion, I turned my back on her and left the room. I didn’t come back later to talk again.
4.
Melanie came into my room that night. I put my finger to my lips to let her know Noah was asleep, and she nodded and pointed down the hallway. I got up and left the room, softly closing the door behind me. Noah slept on the pull-out part of the trundle bed that my mother had bought for me when I was nine so I could have friends sleep over.
I followed Melanie into her room. She still had most of her stuff in boxes and suitcases, like she was just visiting. But it smelled nice in there: she had another vase of fresh flowers on her dresser, must have picked them when she gathered the ones for the dinner table.
“I had an idea,” she said, once she was seated in her desk chair and I was settled crosswise on the twin bed. “You know how you always complain that the other mothers at school don’t talk to you?”
“I don’t complain about it. I’m relieved. I love that they don’t talk to me.”
“Seriously,” she said, even though I wasn’t joking. “You want Noah to have more friends, don’t you? At his age, it’s not about the kids’ being friends—well, not completely about that, anyway. It’s about the moms’ being friends and making plans together. If you get to know more of the moms in your class—”
“I’m like ten years younger than the youngest mom in Noah’s class. They all assume I’m his babysitter. Someone even asked me the other day if I was looking for more work.”
“If you got to know them better, that wouldn’t happen. Anyway, you have to think about Noah. Don’t you want him to get included more?” She didn’t wait for me to respond. “And it’s not just you—I’ve been bad too. Because of what’s been going on with Gabriel, I haven’t been very social, but I have to start getting out there again. Feel like I’m part of something.” She tilted her head toward one shoulder and then the other, like she needed to stretch the muscles there. “I can’t just keep waiting for my old life to come back. I have to get proactive about this, Rickie.”
“That’s very healthy of you,” I said politely. I scooted to the edge of the bed and set my feet down on the carpet. “But why drag me into this?”
“Because you’re worse than I am. Your son is going to be at Fenwick for the next twelve years, Rickie. And you can race past everyone whenever you need to pick him up, and you can sit by yourself at all his performances, and you can skip every class party. But that’s not fair to him or to you. You’re both being left out of stuff you might enjoy.”
If I had been having the same conversation with my mother—and I easily might have—this would have been the point where I would have said something sarcastic and walked out of the room. That was just how it was with me and her. But it was different with Melanie. I was different with Melanie. That didn’t mean I was going to agree with her, though. “So what are you thinking exactly? That we walk around carrying little signs that say ‘Come play wiz us’?”
“Well since you ask…” She smiled sheepishly at me. “I’ve already gone ahead and signed us up for the Event Hospitality Committee—they do the food for all the fund-raisers. There’s a meeting this Friday. We missed the first couple, but the woman who runs it said it’s not too late to join and they could really use the additional help, especially with the Autumn Festival coming up so soon.”
I stared at her. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Why?”
“Come on, Mel. Me on a committee? An event hospitality committee? Do you really think I’ll fit in with that crowd? They’re probably a bunch of crazy type-A mothers who—”
“Don’t judge them until you’ve met them,” she said primly.
“I have met them,” I shot back. “I see them every day at school.”
“People are different when you get to know them one-on-one. Oh, and you know what’s really cool?”
I crossed my arms. “Not an event hospitality committee, I can tell you that.”
“No, listen. She—the woman I talked to who runs the committee—she said that Marley Addison is actually on the committee.”
“Bullshit.”
Melanie wrinkled her nose. “Don’t,” she said. She hated when people swore. “Anyway, it’s true. She’ll be at all the meetings.”
“No, she won’t,” I said. “She’s a movie star. Celebrity parents never show up for stuff like that. They’ll come watch their kids sing in a Christmas show but they’re not going to show up to talk about what kind of sandwiches we should serve at a fund-raiser. They have more important stuff to do.”
“Her daughter’s in Cameron’s class.”
“I know. And how many times have you and Marley chatted?”
“None,” she admitted. “But once we smiled at each other and another time she told Cameron he was cute. She seems nice.”
“Nice or not, she’s not going to show up, and even if she did, what difference would it make? It would still be an event hospitality committee.”
“Please,” Melanie said and literally clasped her hands. “Do it for me. You don’t have to say a word at the meeting, I swear. Just sit with me so I don’t have to go alone.”
I rolled my eyes and groaned. “You are so going to owe me.”
So there we were a few mornings later, going to a meeting in some stranger’s house in the Palisades. I was still grumbling to myself as we got out of the car and headed up to the house, which was too big in proportion to the lot, with a lot of oversized windows and a slightly fake-looking clapboard front. I thought it was kind of ugly, but it was probably worth several million dollars, given its location and size.
“It’s pretty,” Melanie said as we walked up the stone path side by side. “Don’t you think? I think it’s pretty.” A pause. “It’s really pretty.”
I glanced over at her. She had dressed for this event like she was going to an important business meeting, in a pair of tailored black pants, a silk tank top, and a cropped jacket. She had blown her hair dry with a little flip in front and was wearing more makeup than usual. She looked way too polished for a nine a.m. breakfast meeting—or so I thought, until the door opened to our ring and the tall, thin, blond woman of indeterminate age who greeted us turned out to be even more immaculately turned out.
“Hi,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m Tanya.”
“I’m Melanie.” They shook and Mel introduced me. Then she said to the other woman, “You have such a beautiful house.”
“It is lovely, isn’t it?” Tanya said evenly. “I wish it were mine. Linda was busy getting the coffee, so I said I’d answer the door for her.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Melanie said, her pale skin turning red the way it always did the second she was embarrassed or anxious. I thought, not for the first time, that the girl could have used thicker skin, both literally and figuratively. “That was stupid of me—”
“It’s fine,” Tanya said, cutting her off with a shrug that said she never made stupid mistakes but was used to forgiving lesser mortals theirs. She stood back to let us in. “Come in. We’re all in the back.”
“Man, this is going to be fun,” I whispered in Melanie’s ear as we followed Tanya through a large, slightly cluttered foyer.
“Shh,” she hissed, apparently not in the mood for sarcasm.
Me, I’m always in the mood for it.
We entered a cavernous room where a few women were grouped around the biggest coffee table I’d ever seen—it had to be at least six feet by six feet. Two people could have slept side by side on that coffee table, although not at that particular moment, since it was sp
read with plates of muffins, bagels, cut fruit, coffee cups, plates, napkins, and silverware. There was enough food there for the entire parent body of the school, and definitely too much for the small number of skinny women grouped around it.
Heads turned as we came in and Tanya ushered us toward the others. “Everyone, this is Melanie Correa—daughter in fourth and son in kinder, right? And Rickie Allen, who has a son in first.” She had done her homework. She probably always did her homework. And her kids’ homework too.
Tanya pointed to the other women, each in turn. “This is Maria Dellaventura.” Another thin woman with blond hair, longer and more layered than Tanya’s, raised her hand briefly. “You probably know her already, Rickie, because she has a son in first”—I didn’t—“and also a daughter in sixth. And this is Carol Lynn Donahue”—yet another thin blond woman, clad in a tight spandex running tank, raised a tautly muscular arm in acknowledgment—“two in middle school, one in the high school.” She gestured to the woman who was just setting a carafe of coffee on the table. “And Linda Chatterjee.” This one was thin like the others but at least her hair was dark. She was also strikingly beautiful. “She’s got a son in fourth. And this is her house.”
“Please sit down and eat something,” Linda said. “Someone has to eat something.” Looking around, I could understand her plea: none of the women had anything on the plates in front of them except a slice of fruit or two.
Tanya sat down next to Carol Lynn, taking up all the easily accessible sofa real estate. I plunked down on the floor, crisscrossed my legs, and reached for a muffin. Melanie studied the sofas hopefully, but the women had resumed the conversation we had interrupted, and no one moved to make room for her. I patted the floor next to me but she shook her head and gestured at her nice pants.
Linda, who was still standing, noticed Mel’s uncertainty and said, “Hold on—there are more chairs in the kitchen.” She put down the carafe of coffee and ran into the adjoining kitchen. “Here you go!” she said, reappearing and lugging a barstool. She set it down near where I was sitting. It was a very high stool.
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